Old Notebook

One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is flipping through an old notebook. One with all of the pages filled out and all sorts of taped in papers, sticky notes, and stickers of places you’ve been. A notebook is a mini library of memories. Each page is a reminder of a great adventure.

When you flip through the pages you get a glimpse of the journey of your life. Your high and low moments. Your moments of great pondering and great realization.

There’s something too about the way that an old notebook is worn out that makes it intriguing. The way it’s slightly bent up as if it’s sat in many a bags while you hiked deeper into uncharted territory. The pages no longer present fears of paper cuts and instead feel smooth to the touch.

I love blogging and all of it’s capabilities, like how I can share my story with the click of a button and upload visuals that capture what my words can’t describe; however, I don’t think anything will ever be as comforting as holding an old notebook. Something about the way you can physically take hold of the stories of your past brings a level of connection that you just can’t get digitally.

My notebook isn’t even close to as detailed or thought out as my blog posts. Most of the pages are literally just filled with notes: notes from interviews, observations, meetings, general research on whatever project I was working on. Everything from college notes to gymnastics routines come to rest in one of my notebooks from time to time. Sometimes my old notes don’t even make sense to me anymore, but I typically still remember the moment writing them down even if I don’t recall what about. I think that’s really why a notebook is magical. It isn’t as much about the content on the page as much as it is about the memory of why time was taken to write it down.

There’s something both incredibly exciting and depressing about the moment when you fill out the last page of a notebook. On the one hand it’s crazy to think you’ve had enough experiences since getting the notebook to fill out every page; it’s such a great visual representation of all of the work you’ve done in a set amount of time. But at the same time, finishing a notebook means that you should probably stop caring that one around and get a new one. It’s sad because that means those memories won’t be quite as close to you anymore. It means you’re growing up and some moment will undoubtedly get lost along the way.

I had the pleasure of needing to flip through an old notebook tonight and it was nice to revisit some old moments and remember just how far I’ve come in the past few years. A lot has changed, and yet a lot has also remained surprisingly the same.